Hardt Michael, Negri Antonio. Commonwealth
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5.1
TERMS
OF THE
ECONOMIC
TRANSITION
When
the house is on fire one forgets even the
dinner—Yes,
but one
recovers it from among the
ashes.
—Friedrich
Nietzsche,
Beyond
Good
and
Evil
Neoliberal
Zombies
The marriage between
U.S.
unilateralism and economic neoliberal-
ism
is a relatively recent union.The courtship may have begun
with
the 1973
Chilean
coup
d'etat
led by Augusto Pinochet,
which
was
supported by the CIA and put into practice an economic plan au-
thored by
Milton
Friedman and the "Chicago boys." Things got se-
rious
with
Margaret Thatcher's election as
U.K.
prime minister in
1979.
But the union was only consummated
with
Ronald
Reagan
in
the White House in the 1980s. At
that
point it began to seem
natural and inevitable
that
an economic
policy
of radical privatiza-
tion
of public goods and industries, unrelenting attack on labor or-
ganizations, and an ideology of free
trade
should go hand in hand
with
U.S.
dominance of
global
political
and military affairs. Reagan
tore
down the
Berlin
Wall,
the myth goes, and vanquished not only
the Soviet
Union
but also socialism
itself
such
that
now
there
is no
alternative throughout the
world
to neoliberal economic
policy
supported by
U.S.
power.
1
There were alternatives, of course, despite all the rhetoric to
the contrary. In particular, as we saw in Part 4, various multilateralist
arrangements
of
global
power, most often
involving
a concert among
the dominant European nation-states, competed
with
U.S.
unilater-
264 BEYOND CAPITAL?
TERMS
OF THE
ECONOMIC TRANSITION
265
alism
throughout
this period. The multilateralist options were not
anticapitalist,
of
course, but they
presented
different mixtures
of
state
control
and privatization, welfare
structures
and
free
markets. In fact
this competition was based, one might say, on which
political
ar-
rangement
can
better
guarantee
the profits and continuity of the
global
capitalist system. The
political
decision for the union between
neoliberalism
and
U.S.
unilateralism—a decision, of course,
that
was
not
made
in one boardroom or government office but
across
a wide
spectrum of actors—elevated and centralized capitalist command in
order to control the global economic transition, from Fordism to
post-Fordism, as
some
economists say, or from a paradigm centered
on
industrial production to one centered on biopolitical produc-
tion.
This was an
extreme
decision, especially viewed in
retrospect,
but
that
extremity is an indication of the immensity of the
task
it
was
meant
to
fulfill
and the
difficulty
of managing the transition.
With
the collapse of
U.S.
unilateralism, the marriage
fell
apart.
The
political
and military armory of unilateralism proved incapable
of
managing the capitalist transition and lately, through a
decade
or
more of seemingly
endless
global war, economic disorder has only
increased. The inadequacies
came
into plain view with the U.S. fi-
nancial
meltdown and the
subsequent
global economic crisis. It is
obvious, in fact, when we look at the
nature
of the crisis and the
transition
of
capital,
that
the
weapons
of
unilateralism are completely
unsuited to
address
the challenges facing neoliberalism.
The crisis is caused, to put it in the most synthetic
terms,
by
the new ontology of
biopolitical
labor. The forms of intellectual, af-
fective,
and cognitive labor
that
are emerging in the central role in
the contemporary economy
cannot
be controlled by the forms of
discipline
and command developed in the era of the factory society.
We
have
argued elsewhere, in fact,
that
this transition toward the
hegemony of
biopolitical
production was set in motion by the ac-
cumulation of struggles
across
the globe in the 1960s and 1970s
against
that
imperialist and industrial disciplinary model of capitalist
control.
The transition was a
response
to the
defeat
of
a form
of
cap-
italist
production and command by workers' movements and social
struggles.
2
Recourse to US unilateralism, with its imperialist imagi-
nary, to
manage
this transition was really an
attempt
to
treat
a new
disease
with old remedies. In the
final
analysis, the primary responsi-
bility
for this decision to
link
capitalist economic
strategy
to unilat-
eralism
resides
not so much in the U.S. government but in the
world's jittery stock
markets
and the panicky souls of the wealthy.
Beware bourgeois insecurity! It is not the first time, of course,
that
capital
has looked to a strong central
political
authority to calm the
markets
and provide stability for profits. But it
turns
out
that
the
nature
of this transition and the conditions
necessary
for
biopolitical
production are
inimical
to
those
outdated
forms of discipline and
control.
When
the failures of unilateralism become
apparent,
as we saw
in
political
and military
terms
in Part 4, the major
commentators
and politicians unerringly run to multilateralism as the
political
sup-
port for neoliberalism.This has always
been
the
official
ideology, for
example, of the
World
Economic Forum meetings, which bring to-
gether
in Davos, Switzerland, government and
corporate
leaders
from
around the world. An ever more global world, the logic
goes,
needs
increasingly to rely on a multilateral system of power—but
such multilateral support is nowhere to be found. Unilateralism de-
feated multilateralism: the United
States
may
have
been
too weak to
rule on its own, but it was strong enough to block multilateral ar-
rangements.
That
does
not mean, though,
that
once unilateralism
fails,
multilateralism can
take
over. No, the foundations of multilater-
alism
were already rotting before unilateralism
gave
it the coup de
grace. Neither unilateralism nor multilateralism is capable of sup-
porting a neoliberal economic project. It may be useless, in fact, to
search for a
political
form capable of supporting neoliberalism. Un-
like
those
partisans
of the "autonomy of the
political,"
we do not
believe
that
a
political
power can independently configure and
maintain an economic system. The problem
here
is not only the lack
of
political
support but also and more important the incapacities of
neoliberalism
itself.
To
understand
how neoliberalism has failed and, in fact, how it
266
BEYOND CAPITAL?
TERMS
OF THE
ECONOMIC TRANSITION
267
was never capable of being a program for capitalist production, we
need to shift perspective and focus on the
biopolitical
terrain.
All
of
the primary characteristics of neoliberal policy—strong private
property rights and weak labor rights, privatization of common and
public
goods, free markets, and free
trade—are
focused on com-
merce and the redistribution of wealth. "The main substantive
achievement of
neoliberalization,"
David
Harvey rightly
claims,
"has
been to redistribute,
rather
than
generate,
wealth and income,"
pri-
marily
thanks
to
strategies
of accumulation for the wealthy through
dispossession of the public and the poor. In this
sense,
Harvey con-
tinues, neoliberalism is at
base
a project to
restore
class power.
3
Un-
der neoliberal policies the wealthy have indeed grown much more
wealthy and the poor correspondingly poorer
within
each nation
and globally. Extraction processes—oil, gas, and minerals—are the
paradigmatic industries of neoliberalism. But a large portion of the
"generation" of wealth under neoliberalism has been achieved
merely by feeding off the corpse of
socialism,
in the former second
world
as
well
as the first and third, transferring to private
hands
the
wealth
that
had been consolidated in public property, industries, and
institutions. Keep in mind
that
the
essence
of the capitalist mode of
production is and must be to produce wealth; but this is exactly neo-
liberalism's
weakness. The crisis of
neoliberalism,
then, is due not so
much
to the failure
of
unilateralism
or multilateralism to provide an
effective supporting
political
arrangement
and
guarantee
its redistri-
butions of property, but
rather
to the incapacity of neoliberalism to
present
a schema for stimulating and organizing production. No
capitalist
strategy
can survive long without
that.
The
illusion
that
neoliberalism could be a sustainable eco-
nomic
program is
testament
to how
difficult
it is for many to recog-
nize
the
nature
of production in a postindustrial economy. It is
easy, of course, to see and count the automobiles, steel beams, and
refrigerators
that
roll
out the factory
gates
or the
tons
of grain from
the farm, but how can you put your finger on the immaterial prod-
ucts
that
become predominant in the
biopolitical
economy—the
images, codes, knowledges, affects, and even social relations and
forms of
life?
To
appreciate the novelty of this situation, consider, for exam-
ple,
a thumbnail sketch of the productive role of knowledge in cap-
italist
economic history. Economic historians have insisted at length
on
the fact
that
knowledge, developed through practice and labor,
was already a productive force in the mercantilist era.
4
In industrial
capitalism
knowledge remained a fundamental force of develop-
ment,
but increasingly, as the industrial paradigm took
shape,
its im-
portance was not so much as an internal element, incarnated in the
practice of workers and consolidated in their
skills
and know-how,
but
rather
as an external one, independent of the workers and
thus
capable
of
controlling
them.
As
industrial capitalism matured,
knowl-
edge
became
fundamental but completely absorbed
within
the sys-
tem of command. In today's economy, in contrast, knowledge
that
is
widespread across society—mass intellectuality—is becoming a cen-
tral
productive force, out of reach of the system of control, and this
shift
undermines the industrial paradigm. "The crisis of industrial
capitalism,"
writes
Carlo
Vercellone,
is
in large
measure
the result
of
a social transformation
that
had
already configured a model of alternative development struc-
tured on two principal axes: the reappropriation and socializa-
tion
of
knowledges
that
went
well
beyond the so-called scien-
tific
organization of labor, creating alternative forms of labor
that
reject productivism; and the expansion of the collective
services of the welfare
state
(health, education, research, and
so forth) as
sectors
and motors of a nonproductivist mode
of
development, based not on commodities but on intensive
productions of knowledge aimed at the "production of man
by
man" and the reproduction of widespread intellectual ca-
pacities.
5
Production,
in other words, is becoming "anthropogenetic,"
gener-
ating forms of
life.
From this trajectory of knowledge
within
eco-
nomic
production, two important facts
follow.
First, knowledge is
no longer merely a
means
to the creation
of
value (in the commod-
ity
form), but
rather
the production of knowledge is
itself
value
creation.
6
Second, not only is this knowledge no longer a weapon
268
BEYOND CAPITAL?
TERMS
OF THE
ECONOMIC TRANSITION
269
of
capitalist control, but also capital is in fact confronted with a
paradoxical
situation: the more it is forced to
pursue
valorization
through knowledge production, the more
that
knowledge
escapes
its control.
Here we are touching on a dilemma
that,
in the era of biopo-
litical
production, faces capital as such, not just its neoliberal forms.
We
will
explore its consequences in more detail, but for the mo-
ment
it is sufficient to recognize
that
neoliberalism has not gone
into crisis only
because
it was
tethered
to unilateralism and is sink-
ing
along with it. Neoliberalism was already dead, in effect,
because
it
fails to
grasp
and
engage
the
biopolitical
productive forces; it can-
not provide a schema to foster production and increase the genera-
tion
of wealth.
Biopolitical
production
poses
a problem for capital,
in
other words, and neoliberalism has no answer.
Socialist
Illusions
Just
as when the failure of unilateralism becomes evident the major
commentators and politicians run back to multilateralism (without
recognizing
that
it is already dead), so too when the failure of neo-
liberalism
becomes clear the
same
figures turn to socialism or some
form
of government
management
and control of the economy
(without understanding
that
its powers have already been com-
pletely
exhausted). These two ideologies, neoliberalism and
social-
ism,
seem to be the only poles of the contemporary economic
imaginary.
And yet neither is able to control and stimulate produc-
tion
in the
biopolitical
economy.
Socialism
did
present
a powerful model of economic produc-
tion
throughout the twentieth century on both sides
of
the
cold
war
divide.
It is important to understand
that
socialism and capitalism
never were opposites, but
rather,
as many
critical
analysts of the So-
viet
Union
claimed, socialism is a regime for the
state
management
of
capitalist production. Strong socialist elements—bureaucratic
planning
and regulation of the economy,
state-run
industries and
public
services, coordinated
state
regulation of capital and organized
labor, and so forth—were also common throughout the capitalist
countries. And the various forms of developmentalism
that
domi-
nated the economic ideology of the subordinated countries in the
latter
half
of the century, equally in countries aligned with the
United
States
or the Soviet
Union,
were focused
similarly
on the
increase of productive capacities through
state
intervention and bu-
reaucratic planning. Programs of import substitution industrializa-
tion,
closely
linked
to dependency theories, were likewise centrally
reliant on
state
control of markets and tariffs and intervention in the
formation
and regulation of national industries.
7
Socialism,
in the
final
analysis, is a regime for the promotion and regulation of indus-
trial
capital, a regime of work discipline imposed through govern-
ment
and bureaucratic institutions.With the
passage
from the indus-
trial
to the
biopolitical
economy, however, socialist
management
and
regulation lose all their effectiveness.
The incapacity of socialist ideology and rule to move beyond
the industrial paradigm is one important element, for example,
that
led
to the collapse of the Soviet
Union.
Standard narratives
about
the
costs
of the
arms
race, the military
defeat
in Afghanistan, and
even the popular desire for commodities all have some explanatory
power, but it is much more important, in our view, to look at the
internal social dynamic and the obstacles to social production in the
last
decades
of the Soviet
Union.
Alexei
Yurchak
demonstrates
in a
wonderful
ethnographic study of "late socialism," the period from
the 1960s to the 1980s,
that
Soviet society was far from the
desert
that
cold
war theorists of totalitarianism claimed, but
rather
an ex-
traordinarily
dynamic cultural and ideological environment. This
dynamism,
of course, was not promoted or fostered by the socialist
regime; on the contrary, the regime
presented
unending obstacles
to social and cultural creativity, resulting in a profound stagnation.
Those who
lived
through the collapse, therefore, according to
Yur-
chak's suggestive formulation, found it both utterly unexpected and
completely unsurprising: the power of the socialist regime seemed
to them as if it would go on forever, but at the
same
time they knew
it
could no longer survive.
8
The socialist regime efficiently imposed
discipline
over an industrial society, but once the transition to bio-
I
270 BEYOND CAPITAL?
political
production began to emerge, socialist discipline
became
only
a
fetter
to the social autonomy and cultural creativity
that
it
required.
The incompatibility of socialism and
biopolitical
production
goes
for all forms of
socialism,
bureaucratic planning,
state
regula-
tion,
and so forth—not just the Soviet model. At the most funda-
mental and
thus
most
abstract
level,
the two primary
aspects
of so-
cialism,
as we conceive it, public
management
of economic activity
and a disciplinary work regime, directly conflict with
biopolitical
production. Earlier we argued
that
biopolitical
labor is increasingly
autonomous from capitalist control since its schema of cooperation
is
no longer provided externally, by capital, as it is in the factory, but
generated
within
the productive process. Autonomy is equally re-
quired
from
state
control and government forms of
discipline.
Per-
haps
you can "think on command" or
"create
affective relations to
order," but the results
will
pale compared to what is accomplished
through autonomous social activity. Furthermore, the results
of
bio-
political
production, including social subjectivities and relations,
forms of
life,
have an immediately ontological dimension.
Value
is
generated
in this process, but it is immeasurable, or
rather
it con-
stantly exceeds the units of any accounting scheme; it overflows the
corporation's double-entry ledgers and confounds the public
bal-
ance
sheets
of the
nation-state.
How can you
measure
the value of
an idea, an image, or a relationship? The autonomy of the
biopoliti-
cal
labor process and the immeasurable, overflowing
nature
of the
value produced are two key
elements
of
the current contradiction of
capitalist command. To
capture
surplus value, capital must alienate
the productive singularities, seize control
of
productive cooperation,
neutralize the immaterial, exceeding character of the value, and ex-
propriate the common
that
is produced—all of which
pose
obsta-
cles to and undermine the production process itself. Government
management
and control produces the exact
same
contradiction.
Whether the common is expropriated and its value corralled in
pri-
vate
hands
or by public
means,
under capitalist command or gov-
TERMS
OF THE
ECONOMIC TRANSITION
271
ernment
control, the result is the same: the cycle
of
biopolitical
pro-
duction
is stunted and corrupted.
In
order to investigate what
political
regime can both foster
and control production today, we have to explore further in eco-
nomic
terms
what social production and social wealth
means.
Many
economists use the concept "social capital" to delve into this
ques-
tion
and get beyond crude economistic notions of production. We
are not societies of atomized individuals, they explain, but
rather
are
connected by a social fabric consisting of networks of understand-
ing
and
trust,
shared knowledges and norms of behavior, languages
and habits, and so forth. Without
trust
and sympathy, market ex-
changes
would not
take
place.Without social knowledges and norms,
workers would not be able to
cooperate
and produce
together.
So-
cial
capital is
thus
a supplementary concept: the various forms of
community constitute a stock of wealth
that
makes possible the
functioning
of industrial capital, finance capital, merchant capital,
and all others.
9
This conception of social capital
does
successfully
focus attention on the economic role of
immaterial,
social relations,
but it conceives them as only peripheral to the productive process
proper.
Social
capital, in other words, is not
itself
productive capital.
And
since it is conceived as subsidiary to the primary forms of cap-
ital,
economists are constantly trying to make it conform to their
schemes, devising formulas to
measure
social capital and close it
within
the lines of industrial accounting schedules. Such notions of
social
capital, however, since they are really aimed at complementing
and completing the industrial paradigm of capitalist production, re-
maining
within
its conceptual order of quantities and equilibriums,
do not solve any
of
the paradoxes
of
regulation and control raised by
the transition to
biopolitical
production, its autonomous productiv-
ity,
and its exceeding
measure.
Traditional
versions of
social
democracy continue today to be
proposed as a just, humane, and sustainable politics to
manage
cap-
italist
production and capitalist society; but
these
theories have no
means
to confront the challenges posed by
biopolitical
production
272
BEYOND CAPITAL?
TERMS
OF THE
ECONOMIC TRANSITION
273
and end up completely disoriented in this new
situation.
The
social
democratic doctrine of establishing agreement and trust between
big
business and the institutional labor unions, mediating any possi-
ble
conflicts,
and achieving modest gains for workers, not
only
has
become completely blocked in the dead end
of
corporatism
but also
is
increasingly estranged
from
growing categories of workers.
Like
the theories of
social
capital,
social
democracy can at
best
grasp the
new figures
of
biopolitical
production as supplements or appendages
to Fordist industry and its mode
of
accumulation.
Therefore the
only
figures
of
biopolitical
labor
that
become
politically
relevant,
from
this perspective, are the ones
that
can be forced to fit into the tradi-
tional
labor union structures. In effect,
social
democracy can see
only
the forms and relations
of
production
that
have continued
from
the
past,
and all the
rest,
from
its perspective,
simply
do not exist.
The
"third way"
social
democracy theorized by Anthony
Gid-
dens
and practiced by Tony
Blair
does represent an analytical ad-
vance over doctrinaire socialisms to the extent
that
it recognizes
that
the corporatist
trade
union
politics
of the Fordist era has been (at
least
ideologically)
surpassed.
This
revised
social
democracy essen-
tially
accepts some
of
the key elements of
neoliberal
policy—dereg-
ulation,
privatization, and so forth—and combines them
with
a
greater understanding of the economic value created through the
social
and cooperative development of
biopolitical
labor-power.
What
results is perhaps greater consciousness
of
biopolitical
produc-
tion
and greater
attempts
to capture its results, making them
avail-
able for capitalist profit and development, but
still
no means to solve
the challenges it poses. No
form
of socialist regulation, even
com-
bined
with
elements of
neoliberalism,
can "rationalize"
biopolitical
production
within
its structures or promote its growth.
Biopolitical
production
belongs to the common. Neither public nor private
mechanisms can manage and contain it.
One
also
hears
today urgent,
desperate
appeals for
socialism
or
some
form
of government control of the economy as a result of the
crises and the devastation
that
neoliberalism and unregulated cap-
italism
have wrought.
Capital
is indeed destroying the common in
both its physical and
social
forms at alarming
rates.
Climate change,
resource depletion, and other
ecological
disasters are ever-increasing
threats.
Extreme
social
inequality, barriers and hierarchies of wealth,
race, and nationality, crushing poverty, and a host of other menaces
too are shattering
social
forms of the common. In the background
of
many accounts of the apocalyptic scenarios
that
face us, however,
government management and regulation is the presumed solution.
State regulation might at least
avoid
the worst scenarios of
financial
collapse!
Surely some
state
control can save the planet, or at least
slow
down its
ruin!
At a minimum it can redistribute back to the
poor
some of the wealth
that
global
elites have accumulated by dis-
possession!
Socialism
often functions as the default cure for the
havoc wrought by unregulated
capitalism.
We
agree
wholeheartedly,
of
course,
that
governments have to stop the destruction of the
planet and
that
it
would
be just and beneficial to redistribute wealth
equitably
across the globe. But the
view
of
socialism
that
functions
in
these
visions,
much
like
that
of neoliberalism
that
we critiqued
earlier,
sees
it solely as a mechanism for the distribution of wealth,
not its generation. Our primary point about the
illusions
of
social-
ism,
instead, is
that,
like
neoliberalism, it cannot
fulfill
in the era of
biopolitical
production the task of
promoting,
managing, and regu-
lating
production.
Before
closing
this
brief
reflection on
socialism,
we should re-
member the difference between
socialism
and communism, a differ-
ence
that
has been thoroughly obscured through the last century. In
standard
journalistic
usage
today communism is
likely
to be used to
mean centralized
state
control of the economy and society, a totali-
tarian
form
of government parallel to fascism. Sometimes when a
concept has been so corrupted, it
seems
one ought to abandon it
and
find
another way to name what we desire. But instead, in this
case at least, we
find
it
better
to struggle over the concept and insist
on
its proper meaning. At a purely conceptual
level
we
could
begin
to define communism this way: what the private is to capitalism and
what the public is to
socialism,
the common is to communism.
10
But
what does
that
mean? What
would
be an institution and a gov-
274
BEYOND CAPITAL?
TERMS
OF THE
ECONOMIC TRANSITION
275
ernment of the common? That is one of the questions we
will
have
to investigate in the remainder of this book.
The
Global
Aristocracy
and
Imperial
Governance
All
of the options on offer for
political
and economic global rule
seem to have been
disqualified.
When unilateralism
demonstrates
its
definitive
failure, multilateralism has already collapsed on its rotting
foundations; and when neoliberalism proves incapable of managing
capitalist
production, all versions of
socialism
and
state
management
have already displayed their incapacity to
engage
and develop
bio-
political
productive forces. And yet the global capitalist economy
continues to function. How is production regulated and managed?
How
are profits maintained and
guaranteed?
There is no
fully
real-
ized
economic system in place to
fill
these
needs.
Just as the com-
plex
multilevel
forms of imperial governance establish a form of
rule during the current interregnum in
terms
of
global
power struc-
tures, so too an intricate patchwork of national and transnational
legal
and
political
structures
together
supports the functioning of
the global economy during the current period
of
transition
by regu-
lating
production,
trade,
finance, and property relations.
The characteristics of imperial governance
that
we discussed
earlier
apply equally on this economic terrain. Here too the tired
debates
that
pit the role of the
nation-state
against globalization are
of
no
help.
When
confronting the increasing globalization of capital,
or
more precisely the intensification and taking root of global cap-
ital,
it is clear, on the one hand,
that
national structures alone are not
adequate
to the task of regulation and, on the other,
that
there
is
no global
state
to regulate global capital the way the
nation-states
regulated national capital. Instead political interdependence defines the
mechanisms of economic management, regulation, and
control.
This
is
of course an extraordinarily mixed terrain, composed of, among
other things, coordinated national mechanisms, bilateral and
multi-
lateral
agreements,
international and supranational institutions. The
mixture is fragile not only
because
of the eclecticism of elements
but also
because
the major international economic institutions on
which
it heavily relies, most of
which
were developed in the
previ-
ous multilateralist global framework, are themselves weak and un-
stable. Increasingly today we see how
these
institutions, one after
another, prove unable to
address
the crises for
which
they were de-
signed:
the International Monetary Fund cannot solve a currency
crisis;
the
World
Bank cannot solve a crisis of poverty; the
Food
and
Agriculture
Organization of the
United
Nations (FAO) cannot
solve
a food
crisis;
the
World
Trade Organization cannot solve a
trade
crisis;
and so
on.
These institutions are not entirely useless, of course,
but they do not constitute a sufficient basis for a lasting, stable global
economic
order. Capitalist globalization—the
world
market, the dis-
tribution
networks, the
linked
productive structures, and so forth—
has advanced far ahead
of
the structures of capitalist power.
This
is not to say
that
no one is minding the
store—that
is,
that
global
capital is functioning without
political,
legal, and institutional
regulation
and support. The global structures of capitalist power are
functioning,
but they are provisional and ad hoc, stitched
together
across the different levels
of
the system. Elsewhere we explored some
of
the specific mechanisms being developed on the terrain of
global
economic
management and regulation, such as new legal conven-
tions
that
reinterpret the old lex
mercatoria
in order to govern con-
tracts
not addressed adequately by national legal systems.
11
Here we
want instead to consider the problem of a global capitalist power
structure and its legal framework from a broader perspective and in
relation
to the structures
of
imperial
governance.
What
becomes immediately
apparent
from the perspective of
imperial
governance is the "aristocratic"
nature
of
these
global eco-
nomic
power structures.
We
describe the emerging Empire, drawing
somewhat
ironically
on
Polybius'
eulogy to ancient Rome, as hav-
ing
a mixed constitution defined by a pyramidal structure, combin-
ing
a single monarch, a
limited
aristocracy, and a broader (pseudo-)
democratic
base.
12
Joseph Nye
presents
the
same
pyramidal image
of
mixed Empire
with
a more modern analogy. "The agenda of
world
politics has become
like
a three-dimensional chess game,"
Nye
explains,
276
BEYOND CAPITAL?
in
which
one can win only by playing vertically as
well
as hor-
izontally.
On the top board of
classical
interstate
military issues,
the
United
States
is
likely
to remain the only superpower for
years to come, and it makes
sense
to speak in traditional
terms
of
unipolarity or hegemony. However, on the middle board of
interstate
economic issues, the distribution of power is already
multipolar.
The
United
States
cannot obtain the outcomes it
wants on
trade,
antitrust, or
financial
regulation issues without
the
agreement
of
the European
Union
(EU),
Japan, and others.
It makes little
sense
to
call
this distribution
"American
hege-
mony."
And
on the bottom board
of
transnational issues, power
is
widely
distributed and chaotically organized among
state
and
nonstate
actors. It makes no
sense
at all to
call
this a
"uni-
polar
world"
or an
"American
empire."
13
The middle board of Nye's power game is where the aristocracy
rules, primarily concerned, as he says,
with
global economic man-
agement
and regulation—the realm of multilateral
state
relations,
multi-
and transnational corporations, and global economic institu-
tions.
Many
scholars have recently documented the formation of a
transnational or global capitalist class, closely associated
with
the
corporations and the various
state
and institutional figures who reg-
ulate them,
which
functions as a new global aristocracy.
14
Our
pri-
mary concern here, though, is not the
sociological
definition of this
aristocracy but a structural
view
of the aristocratic functions of
global
economic management and regulation
within
the pyramidal
arrangement
of
the imperial system.
One
aspect
to
note
first about this aristocratic
level
is
that
it is
not composed of homogeneous, equal powers
that
collaborate
peacefully.
Aristocrats have always been a contentious bunch. When
you
look at the internal workings of the global aristocracy—at the
World
Economic Forum meetings, for example, or in
World
Trade
Organization
negotiations—the hierarchies among powers are
obvi-
ous, as
well
as the devious maneuverings,
with
dominant
states
im-
posing
their
will
and excluding others, subordinated
states
ganging
TERMS
OF THE
ECONOMIC TRANSITION 277
up to counter them, and various other
strategies
and power plays
regarding
trade,
antitrust actions,
financial
regulation, property law,
and the
like.
And the dynamics between government regulatory
structures and corporations, both nationally and internationally,
is
another
field
of contest
within
the aristocracy,
which
takes
place
inside
and outside the courtroom. Reporting in the
financial
pa-
pers
thus
sometimes
reads
like
the sports
pages
(when not the crime
report).
The aristocracy is organized, of course, according to very
dif-
ferent models in different countries.The "postsocialist" aristocracies
are
perhaps
the newest models. In Russia an aristocracy has emerged
composed of industrial and
financial
oligarchs
together
with
mafia
thugs
and an array of government
officials.
In
China
instead the
postsocialist
model of aristocracy is anchored more closely to the
state
and party
with
tightly controlled participation of
entrepreneurs
and business elites. What remains of
socialism
in
these
postsocialist
aristocracies is mainly the mechanisms of bureaucratic and party
privilege
along
with
the centralized circuits of power.
Equally
significant or more so than the composition and inter-
nal
dynamics of the aristocracy, however, are the complex relations
of
the global aristocracy considered as a whole
with
the other levels
of
the imperial structure. On one side we see constant
conflict
be-
tween the aristocracy and the monarch.
Unilateralism,
by
which
the
monarch refused to listen to the pleading of the aristocrats,
failed
owing
to not only the exhaustion of its military and
political
forces
but also
thousands
of little aristocratic rebellions. The aristocratic
complaints are
loud
and many: the other dominant
nation-states
as
well
as the subordinated
ones
want to participate in and
reap
the
rewards of the global capitalist system; the corporations are aware
that
unilateralism
with
its endless wars is bad for business; and myr-
iad
others. As Nye says, it makes little
sense
to
view
the multipolar
arrangement of this middle, aristocratic
level
of Empire as defined
by
"American
hegemony." But
these
continual conflicts
with
the
monarch should not
fool
us into thinking
that
the aristocracy is in-
tent
on putting an end to monarchy or siding
with
the multitude.
278
BEYOND CAPITAL?
TERMS
OF THE
ECONOMIC TRANSITION
(Nineteenth-century French history is
full
of
these
ruses
in
which
the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie trick the proletariat and the poor
into
fighting on the front lines, only to cut them
off
when
the battle
has been won and reestablish a new monarchical or imperial order.)
The global aristocracy
needs
the monarch: it
needs
a central military
power in Washington (or
Beijing);
a central cultural power in Los
Angeles
(or
Mumbai);
a central
financial
power in New
York
(or
Frankfurt);
and so forth.The aristocracy simply struggles constantly
to negotiate a more advantageous relationship, forcing the monarch
to collaborate and ensuring for
itself
a
large
share
of the profits.
The global aristocracy must also negotiate and collaborate, on
the other side,
with
those
organisms and institutions
that
claim
to
represent
"the people" on the third, lowest
level
of the imperial pyr-
amid.
In some instances the
political
elites of the subordinated na-
tion-states
masquerade as representatives of the global people, as do
the various popes and imams of the major religions, but most often
they are just poor cousins of the aristocracy trying to get their
share
of
the loot; in
others
the various humanitarian
NGOs
and aid orga-
nizations are cast as representing the people (or at least their inter-
ests);
and the dominant media, of course, are always happy to don
the cloak of the voice of the people. This
level
of the imperial sys-
tem is all smoke and mirrors,
because
in the end
there
is no
adequate
means
of representation and no global people to
represent.
But the
claims
of representation nonetheless play an essential role.
Specifi-
cally,
with
respect to the aristocracy, this third
level
affords mecha-
nisms
of
mediation
to contain the seething multitude. The one thing
that
unites all aristocrats and monarchs, after all, despite their con-
stant
bickering and competition, is fear of the plebs. Although the
aristocracy is unable to
engage
and
manage
the multitude, its con-
stant
negotiations
with
the third
level
of the imperial system, even
though they are
conflictive,
afford it some mechanisms of control
and
means
to calm its fears.
There is no question, then, of any aristocratic secession from
the imperial system. The global aristocracy
will
continually
conflict
with
both the monarchical
level
above it and the "popular"
level
below,
in addition to being plagued constantly by internal battles,
but this
will
never amount to more than jockeying for position,
claiming
a
greater
portion of power, and negotiating the distribu-
tion
of profits. The
three
levels of the imperial constitution need
one another and cannot function on their own.
The real
threat
to the imperial system resides not in its internal
conflicts
and contradictions but in the resistances of the multitude.
"So
the reason why in practice [aristocratic] government is not ab-
solute," Spinoza writes, "can only be this,
that
the multitude is an
object
of
fear to the rulers, thereby maintaining some
degree
of
free-
dom
for itself,
which
it
asserts
and preserves, if not by express
law,
by
tacit understanding."
15
The multitude of the poor, the forces of al-
termodernity, and the
biopolitical
productive forces, as we analyzed
in
the first
half
of this book, are all increasingly autonomous and
exceed the forms of
measure
and control
that
have previously con-
tained them. We need to descend once again to the terrain of the
common
to continue our analysis and explore what alternatives are
emerging to challenge and eventually replace imperial rule.
WHAT REMAINS
OF
CAPITALISM
281
5.2
WHAT
REMAINS
OF
CAPITALISM
But
capitalist production
begets,
with
the
inexorability
of
a
natural
process, its own negation.
This
is the negation
of
the negation. It
does
not re-establish private property, but it
does
indeed establish
individ-
ual
property on the basis
of
the achievements
of
the capitalist era:
namely co-operation and the possession in common of the land and
the
means
of
production
produced by labour itself.
—Karl
Marx,
Capital
The
Biopolitical
Cycle
of
the
Common
The key to understanding economic production today is the com-
mon,
both as productive force and as the form in
which
wealth is
produced. But private property has made us stupid, as
Marx
says, so
stupid
that
we are
blind
to the common! It
seems
that
economists
and politicians can only see the
world
as
divided
between private
and
public,
either owned by capitalists or controlled by the
state,
as if
the common did not exist. Economists do recognize the common,
in
fact, but cast it generally outside of properly economic relations,
as "external economies" or simply "externalities." In order to under-
stand
biopolitical
production, however, we need to invert this per-
spective and internalize the productive externalities, bringing the com-
mon
to the center of economic
life.
The standpoint of the common
reveals how, increasingly in the course of the
present
transition, the
process of economic valorization becomes ever more internal to the
structures
of
social
life.
16
The concept of externality has a long history in economic
thought. In the early twentieth century
Alfred
Marshall
uses
the
term "external economy" to refer to economic activity and devel-
opment
that
takes
place outside the
individual
firm
or industry, in-
cluding
knowledge and expertise
that
develop
socially
in industrial
districts.
17
The term is used increasingly frequently in
subsequent
twentieth-century economics literature, but the meanings of the
term are varied and often ambiguous. This should be no surprise, of
course, since "external economy" is essentially a negative term, des-
ignating
all
that
is outside the economy proper, outside the realm of
exchanges of private property. For most economists, then, external
economy simply
names
all
that
remains out
there
in the dark. In the
1950s J. E. Meade illuminates some of what the term designates by
distinguishing
between two types of external economy or "disec-
onomy":
"unpaid factors," in
which
he includes the activity of
bees
to pollinate fruit
trees;
and "atmosphere," including the
rainfall
on
the orchard.
18
It is easy to recognize, however,
that
each of
these
fac-
tors
also has human,
social
components: unpaid human activities,
such
as domestic labor; and
social
atmospheres, including all
those
that
affect the natural environment—the way, for instance, excessive
logging
affects
rainfall.
Even
for the production of apples we can
easily
see how
these
"external" factors,
which
point toward the com-
mon,
are centrally important. The question
gets
all the more inter-
esting when economists, realizing they can no longer just ignore all
that
is external to the market, go on the offensive against it. External
economies, according to some economists, are "missing markets" or
even indications
of
"market failures." Nothing should be outside the
market, and no productive goods should be "unowned,"
these
econ-
omists maintain,
because
such externalities
would
escape
the mech-
anisms of efficiency imposed by the market.
19
The common has come into clearer
view
in recent years in
large
part
thanks to the work not of economists but of lawyers and
legal
theorists. Debates about intellectual property make it impossi-
ble,
in fact, not to focus on the common and its interaction
with
the
public.
"The most important resource we govern as an open com-
mons," writes
Yochai
Benkler, "without
which
humanity
could
not
be conceived, is all
of
pre-twentieth century knowledge and culture,